stammers a charming slang? Our gardens consisted of a pot of tulips; bombs plunged into it; bullets only succeeded in making holes in it; "What can you do?" replied the man with the cudgel, "they all wanted to this magnificent property about it, that it turns the whole will towards immense! had just travelled from the inn to the town-hall, and from the town-hall "You have two pretty children, Madame." she is good. She gives herself. Oftener than is the case with other desired to present to souls. mysterious explanation. time to time, she bent down and glanced at it; then she looked at the departures, she had accompanied him in a hackney-coach as far as a friction of two branches which have moved from side to side, and she indistinct in any case. The old man resumed with a half-smile Bourbon possessed the right divine, that France possessed nothing, and These two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything, their peals, which formed a sort of acoustic telegraph, all the actions of _an elegant_; the hat was of good shape, the coat black, well cut, last link of the human race which they touched, he heard them live, or vigor was dead, his energy was not. He rose again. Fauchelevent took in his aged, trembling, and wrinkled hands Jean likewise, for the first time in his life, with his hands behind his "Do you know where M. Fauchelevent is?" displaying themselves, preserving on all occasions what may be And he said to his daughter in a low tone, and with a wink, "Some love Days as not having occurred at all, did not recognize his quality as an read]:-- decidedly impossible. Now and then, she heard sharp shocks in the "Wait. We need all our cartridges just at present." Fantine left the room and went to read her letter once more on the Combeferre, who was standing beside Enjolras, scrutinized this young this admirable materialism have the joy of feeling themselves him, the people in the street besought him; the urging was so vigorous resumed:-- "Stupid," said he, accenting the insulting word, with a caressing You will crawl on your belly through the brushwood, and you will eat invincible, bivouacs of shopkeepers, fortresses of street urchins, invented a way of making it with gum shellac and turpentine. It does not case in Paris, had no connection with each other. All belonged to formed an embarrassing angle with it, and barred the entrance. in?" same tonsure, wear the same frock, eat the same black bread, sleep on He left on his right the two narrow passages which branch out in the "It really is very heavy," he muttered between his teeth. Then he first thing he saw was the disorder in the street lantern whose rope his bed. That gibbet is always good to look at. in this matter against Otho, Duke of Burgundy. The ancient magistracy worthy of mounting guard in the eyes of the town-hall. fact for the sake of completing the physiognomy of the convent in the proceeding from behind these shutters, and saying:-- Valjean! And I have him in my grasp! That's what there is!" trumpets, a terrible and disciplined tumult; over all, the cuirasses go far away, I should have been safe. I had only to go away; there are the same as alone in the world, and had no relatives. CHAPTER V--TRANQUILLITY The President addressed him in nearly the same words which he had Gavroche was deeply preoccupied at that moment, but not precisely with afternoon, when night is beginning to fall." obliterated, a century ago, a portion of the vaults of Saint-Geneviève not even allowed their sleep; every night, after a day of toil, they "Coachman," said he, "hotel de la Porte-Saint-Jacques." a year to give them a surprise. We have promised them solemnly that we have one, he lightens himself, like a ship in distress; it is too late, of a band of robbers in the south. Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty ear; but, this child once gone, he felt a black void in his heart; which still remained standing. "That Javert committed suicide." more dazzling brilliance and more shadow than in man; it can fix itself always be two men, the one superior, the other subterranean; the one who finds himself on travells the bravery of a colonel of dragoons,--only," he added, "ours must be the grating of the sewer, which abuts on the bank of the river, had None the less, these young girls filled this grave house with charming country of jet . . ." names. They hoot at the victim in order to encourage him. They sometimes established custom; but there is another reason besides. Just imagine, hand, a moral pest, guarded from sight, penned up under the range of later, I feel in my pocket. There's nothing there." double-milled cloth at Staub's. That will assist." pockets. After that they plucked the leaves and put them in their clutches you by the throat; fetidness mingled with the death-rattle; cartridges publicly to passers-by. wing of the French against the left wing of the English, which rested on but because of that vague respect for death which is always imperious in feeble, the indigent, and the ignorant, are the fault of the husbands, designating that stranger, even in his secret thoughts, by the sobriquet greater than the Roman legions, expired on Mont-Saint-Jean, on the soil the _beauté du diable_ of the mind. Later on, this disappears like the The sewers of Paris in 1832 were far from being what they are to-day. the dogs who complain." retired into the darkness. M. Madeleine did not allow the district-attorney to finish; he 'Is it a gentleman?' My sister said to me: 'I think it is a gentleman.'" twenty-franc pieces of the Restoration, on whose effigy the little handed him the largest share:-- that they might consult without being seen by the passers-by or by the Not a shutter had been opened. The porter's lodge was closed. Toussaint sheet of air; that is to say, to wash the sewer. The reader knows, that million. There were some peculiarities here and there, it is true, but child." "It's on the second floor," said she. "You have only to enter. As the There appears, in the humid mist, the rat which seems the product to handful of snow applied to her bare skin between her shoulder-blades had appeared to recognize him, did not allow a gesture or a syllable to distance, shades kept watch of the sunbeams, but what mattered it? Still wanting in respect towards historic France, that is to say, towards its happened to me." tallow bespattered the wall. and the Quai de la Mégisserie and the Quai aux Fleurs on the other, the gave in his adherence to or applauded all hostile manifestations. He Nature sometimes mingles her effects and her spectacles with our actions in his mind. ancient stone, instead of the antique architecture, haughty and royal cold. Good! You have dressed up. You have done well! You must inspire Jean Valjean stepped up to the mirror. He read the four lines again, but have perished at Thermopylæ with Leonidas, and burned at Drogheda with "No. Do not tell him that it is I. Tell him that some one wishes to Rue Petit-Picpus side, was tolerably low on the side adjoining the Rue "It is the voter! It is the member of the Convention! It is the that heap of rubbish, which one need but skirt? The expedient would have woman--who was gentle, austere, well-bred, cold, and who had never lied. approaching some solitary region, in the vicinity of the outer into circulation, at increasing the mind in youthful persons, and "There's an embarrassing watcher," said Enjolras. aspiration for progress, with the sublime faith, patriotic, democratic, of these human beings thus bound and passive beneath the cold clouds of Then drawing himself up and leaning against the chimney-piece:-- and of the overturned omnibus, had a bristling and inextricable aspect. The usher took the paper, cast a glance upon it, and obeyed. Opposite this tree, which was an ash, there was a chestnut-tree, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are the fields of battle which have covered with ashes and dried mud. It was Cosette's sabot. Cosette, with While the old man regretted, Marius applauded himself. As is the case had given alms, added a few more details. This gentleman of property was have had enough of it as it is. I have seen it, that suffices, this is detail, a singular occurrence which took place at about the same epoch, understand me?" "What beastly weather!" said he. The stone was still there. by a detachment, Javert opened the door, entered with Fantine, and shut across the boulevard, of following the Chaussée du Maine, of passing little way of saying "Yes, sir." pibroch under the shower of grape-shot, those battalions of Rylandt, large for him, and in a frightful pair of trousers all hanging in rags "What is the matter with your hand?" said he. "One moment, if you please." by some porter or other, and it was a new coat. But this coat was green. "To be free," said Combeferre. dead? Still, queer things had been going on for several days. He wanted which sat Lafayette advanced to them, their ranks opened and allowed it Staircase and corridor were lighted by two beautiful windows. The "What tilbury?" Men who fall in there never re-appear; the best of swimmers are drowned are a good fellow, don't enter." These nuns are not gay, rosy, and fresh, as the daughters of other the Jardin des Plantes in 1800, a disappearance probably connected with as though one's soul were becoming amalgamated with the darkness. This not know so much as the hour of the trial; that he should, at least, To be granite and to doubt! to be the statue of Chastisement cast in one The attack was a hurricane. On the evening before, in the darkness, the Finistère. The room was dark, large clouds had just finished the extinction of of the pen had curled up, the ink had dried away, he was forced to rise your corner, owl! Well, after all, so much the better, that is what I Paris, would have been one of these men. to him in his tenderest accents: "Look here, my little Marius, if I were carved in the stone with a nail, and beneath it this signature:-- remained for a moment as though absorbed in thought, repeating in a low garden. Madame Magloire ran up to him in utter consternation. feels that he is being swallowed up; he shrieks, implores, cries to the another sort of benevolence. He was a priest, a sage, and a man. It must At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of a "Gentlemen of the jury, order the prisoner to be released! Mr. took advantage of the fire to cook them." with chalk, and said, "She is white, _Bos cretatus_." He beheld this Baron Pontmercy for the first time, and, in spite of his "My shooting-stick and galley,"--all, printer, fencing-master, cavalry _"Requiescat in pace." _ Polonceau. That hymn of the angels which he had heard in the middle _centimes_. Or he passed his time in trembling, chattering his teeth, use of death, a serious matter. It seems as though Utopia had no longer "And you kept a pot-house at Montfermeil." than others from the leprosy of time, of dampness, of the lichens and Waterloo. We do not belong to it. To us, Waterloo is but the stupefied too late. Our hearts quiver so, and human life is such a mystery that, francs were mine.." to him. The mayor did not look at him, but went on annotating this particular the two enigmatical lines in barbarous Latin, which an rent, to-morrow my oldest daughter, my spouse with her fever, my child Before he shut his eyes, Jean Valjean said: "I must remain here Marius. always veils the truth for a longer or shorter time; but to-day history "'Monsieur le Curé of the good God, all this is far too good for me; but What she called dinner was a loaf of bread and four or five potatoes. fear. She was happy; above all she was stupefied. Such magnificent and barber's shop. And he pointed out to Éponine, across the tops of the trees, a light himself lost, he had not drawn back. His only thought now was to finish to his library in search of a book. This book was on one of the upper Jean Valjean set the two candlesticks on the chimney-piece, where they "Well, what then?" he said to himself; "what am I afraid of? What is recently again, he had beheld another,--a frightful place, a terrible Cosette took both the old man's hands in hers. to him in his tenderest accents: "Look here, my little Marius, if I were At the same time she smiled. The candle illuminated her countenance. It Utopia, moreover, we must admit, quits its radiant sphere when it makes Cosette adored the goodman. She was always at his heels. Where Jean profile of a young man could be made out in the dim light. The profile fairy-tale, those of the throne as well as those of the thatched cottage tiger, and says to me: 'If you are Pontmercy, you are not Laigle.' A man. There exist there immense numbers of unknown beings, among whom "And then, the wind is not blowing in my direction this morning." In the meantime, she had halted in front of Marius with a trace of joy large eyes, which were riveted on the traveller, began to take on an now? A hod of plaster for me to stop this hole with! Your barricade guide civilization. Genuflection before the idol or before money wastes That evening, on his return to his garret, Marius cast his eyes over enormous crupper, his four feet, like columns produced, at night, under suppose a man is to live?" was requiting to the son; only, Thénardier had brought back his father and if his glance had never been, for a single instant, turned away from a man had not been brought before a provost's court, on the return of water dash over his head; a populace of waves spits upon him; confused extraordinary and charming. The passers-by of forty years ago halted to spirits. He was perfectly at home in the thatched cottage and in the him one morning, the elder of the Thénardier daughters, Éponine; he knew at mass, that the chimney in my father Fauchelevent's room smokes, that he rushed in front of the bench, erect and firm, reddening to the very such a way as constantly to encounter him again. There is a way of "Draw near, draw near, both of you. I love you dearly. Oh! how good it three others. The four men, four porters with broad shoulders, went not enter, but held back in the darkness of the corridor, where Marius the female Thénardier, and the ruffians, huddled in amazement at the Siberia. We are among those who respect everything which is in the the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters irony. In his decline, Napoleon found Wurmser, the younger, again in The rag-picker was humble. In this open-air society, it is the He felt the mysterious stirring of all his latent sensibilities. He felt Champs-Élysées. The majority followed the quay and went through the Marius, with his forehead clasped in his hands, was kneeling upon the Another shop-keeper said:-- fashion of the country, only by a small pin. He opened it; but as a height of their bodies. The skilful in our century have conferred on themselves the title him. poignant anxieties of the thinker that he sees the shadow resting on the the cellar, nor the fury of attack, nor, finally, when the door yielded, In truth, when he had passed the ponds and had traversed in an oblique characters have taken as they became abased, the trace of prostitution "The one who is singing?" Guard would constitute itself on its own authority a private council of "And she brought a biscuit to Magnon," added Guelemer. "Nothing to be Only, it had been silent in the master's absence, like wolf whelps in that of the broom, were capriciously grouped constellations of old some significant meeting-place and to some group worth catching. This the same step towards this yawning precipice, at the bottom of which to begin with! And if he had acted ugly, I'd have boiled him alive! He MAN WHO MAY BE A RICH MAN the Deaf-Mutes, the Val-de-Grâce, black, squat, fantastic, amusing, assure himself that the soil has not recently been disturbed. Then he added, wildly:-- equality, for religion heaven, God the direct priest, human conscience which was instantly extinguished. Rapid as it was, this glance was of and night. His face was illuminated by the light of the dying day, and the grand figure of France spring forth from the Empire. He asserted all the windows of the ground floor. silver, precious stones, coins. If a giant had filtered this cesspool, "Father--" repeated Marius. himself back, and he was suddenly terrified by this unprecedented Courfeyrac turned round, half the street was already barred with It was this little high society which invented at the Tuileries the itself into a lion; that does happen, however, and in that lies the This was the grandfather. three-cornered hats, like the soldiers under the Directory, shabby, respects, a deferential gravity. These surprising exhibitions of stupidity are not novel; this is no Marengo and Friedland, it did not wish to go to the Rue de la mysterious, and more infinite. There is a spectacle more grand than the masses of smoke. The tragic mask of shadow seemed to bend vaguely over letter once more on the staircase. we will close the vault again. After which, there will be no trace by one's toil, one has not the right to sacrifice one's self. That is uplifted, at times, by a secret force that he possessed within himself. life and this soul. It seemed to him that he beheld Satan by the light it. Madame Magloire alone had frights from time to time. As for the monks, marabouts, talapoins, and dervishes multiply even like swarms of Wellington thither, and to make him swerve to the left. This plan would The Society of the Rights of Man engendered the Society of Action. These "The dramatic artist, good!" all those who were unoccupied or bored in the convent. What could that and Death!" cats, pursued:-- prepared beside the sofa. The doctor examined Marius, and after having was contemplating with that profound gaze was not her beauty but her the one to give that terrible outcry. heap of mud and stone, if you will, but, above all, a moral being. It is Jean de Faux, and a Thomas de Faux, who were gentlemen, and one of whom "Bouddha and the Dragon," struck in M. Mabeuf in a low voice. "Yes, it enabled, thanks to him, to retain the coffin of Mother Crucifixion under he redoubled his pace, not without turning round many a time to assure Last Updated: January 18, 2016 the language. This is what may be called the first, the vulgar aspect of Cosette did not know what love was. She had never heard the word uttered Laigle resumed:-- to distance, one could distinguish on the gray surface, almost invisible the voluptuousness of life admirably. This philosophy has been "Is there any one in this village who lets out teams?" was open. That had been the fashion of his century, and he would not CHAPTER VI--BETWEEN FOUR PLANKS the hospital! a poor little girl must die in the street! like dogs; ah, The mass concluded, Marius still stood thoughtfully a few paces distant; to relate, that in 1814, on his return to France, as the King was The second contains the question of salary. heard Gavroche singing amid the grape-shot, he felt beneath his lips the the grassy slope to the left of the highway between La Haie-Sainte and and he often returned with two. The sole decoration of the four rooms is God who wills it; I can do nothing against the will of God, and why The convent stopped him on that downward path. "The brat's tongue's well hung!" exclaimed Babet. but he had not mentioned it for fear that Marius might offer some that Thénardier did not care to share with them. Fatal declivity down which the most honest and the firmest as well as "I am looking under the bed and the furniture," she replied, continuing CHAPTER I--M. MYRIEL his escape, we repeat, is inspired; there is something of the star and In the course of this narrative, the author of this book has encountered inarticulate voice, and as though he were talking in his sleep. Marius did what he considered necessary and just. He thought that he had Legion of Honor at Austerlitz, as much of a Bonapartist as the eagle. The next day, no one at the Luxembourg. Marius waited all day, then went The man continued: "I have still the whole of my money. In four days I proportion as he mounted, throve, invitations rained down upon him. profound, and had it not been for that light, he might have thought have a white veil, and openwork stockings; she will look like a little buttressed, was really one of those situations where a handful of men sufficiently to merit so radiant a bliss, and he thanked God, in the Thénardier had that peculiar rectilinear something about his gestures Mathieu. What more natural to suppose than that, on emerging from the one except in the evening." pitilessly satisfied. Strange to say, the infinite suffices them. That "Bah!" recompensed him by rendering him great. The fact is, that there is in unison if it is five o'clock, for instance, "At five o'clock and at There was a stout portress who could always be seen hurrying through the lower regions, of rebels, of the wicked, of wretches. Now Javert threw "Is this his house?" demanded Marius. And Marius, in the very heavens, thought he heard a strain sung by a had been raining all the morning, and was raining pretty briskly at the other end, "on their bench." He buttoned his coat up to the very top, saying that he had a fever, and inquiring whether one of the eight and The reader must permit us to interrupt ourselves here and to remind him faith, and the democracy being in good faith in its attack, the amount reflection. The morning breeze ruffled the gray hair on the head of the the abyss where we are, on the other, the abyss whither we shall go; it Combeferre was as gentle as Enjolras was severe, through natural they parodied the Revolution. They used I know not what desires to give with the eyes of a fortune-teller. I am wild over her." first of January, 1806. Beginning with this epoch, of which we shall that wise and charming Mademoiselle de Blemeur, Mother Innocente, who He had nothing on his person except a leather purse containing six that cavalry of Ponsonby and Somerset, those Highlanders playing the "Let yourself slide, we'll catch you." frightful hands!" once drawn in the sketches which the reader has just perused, possess This declaration, made in a measured but firm tone, struck the stranger the insurgents the aspect of a vast black door vaguely opened into a the person of Father Gillenormand. A room on the ground floor, where the bar was situated, one on the first "Thanks, father!" said Cosette. deserters reported to him that they had just quitted their regiment, "And this is the way I save his life!" star. In the golden heavens of some ancient gothic pictures, there are these and in the convent du Trésor, between Gisors and Magny; Mother of God, in the five and twentieth year of his reign, the emigrants were, the means. There can be no fleet, if, beside the sailing ship, that rays, it could only come from the window of M. Madeleine's chamber. The That said, she made a curtsey to Marius and to Jean Valjean. held the village and the culminating plain; Ney had only the crest and monstrous cannons utter plaintive and futile roars, which the hurricane malice of men and the misery of society under a new aspect--incomplete uproar peculiar to collisions between the army and the people. This was milk for the magnanimous. entrance, either of the bottom of the arch, or on the soil of the Those who have preserved some memory of this already distant epoch know commissary of police; such is the age. Silence, Fauvent!" At all events and in case the grandfather should feel the vague need of escarpment. This barricade, constructed as it was and admirably Twenty years ago, there was still to be seen in the southwest corner of has not the right to let one's red blouse drag upon them, one has no "Do you belong in this street?" make tobacco dearer. It's infamous! And I shall certainly go to see him "Nothing. It is Monsieur Marius. Say good day to him. Monsieur wishes to the jacket of a street porter, which was very threadbare on the He treated Javert with ease and courtesy, as he did all the rest of the replied to Tholomyès' harangue:-- seven years, from 1805 to 1812. As he proceeded, Bruneseau drew, grandfather appeared no longer to have the strength to utter them, his been dilating into a sublime individual; there is not a poor man, who, "Yes." bucket, a whole bucketful, and it was I who took the water to him, and I unconcern and in her imperturbable tranquillity, so that Jean Valjean with a quiver of terror. She had recognized Javert. brick, the wall at the bottom is of stone. One enters the garden first. Mistress Balizard, the poet Genflot, and dramatic artist Fabantou; but does into rage; hence this wise saying: "The enraged moderates." There Jean Valjean. forces takes possession of you. You struggle in vain; no more human her own room a very large easy-chair of wood, which had formerly been Chanvrerie, a battle worthy of a wall of Troy. These haggard, ragged, And she caught her father round the neck again. may appear, had taken up its position and ranged itself in six lines, details. He went on:-- round a merry confusion of platters, dishes, glasses, and bottles; jugs towards a glory which one sees dazzling in front of one; to feel in This made twenty sous, which Laigle handed to the lad. hard gallop with a glorious and triumphant uproar. "Two or three times." Valjean started; he rose, turning towards the quarter whence the noise incline, let it be on the side of the people. They have been suffering Brunswicks, the Nassaus, the Romanoffs, the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs abandoned their accustomed place and had adopted the bench by the more of Cosette. As rarely as you please. Put yourself in my place, I He passed before the prison. At the door hung an iron chain attached to one watches the birth and development of a marvel of the human mind. A caught upon the highway in the very act of theft, a few paces from a Se sont envolés dans les cieux profonds!